2004
At 02:40 (07:40 UT), in the 2800 block of S. Ellen Street in the Bay View
neighborhood of Milwaukee, Wisconsin, as Frank Jude Jr., 26, a Black stripper
(who had a police record of violence), accompanied by a Black man (Lovell
Harris) and two White women (Kirsten Antonissen and Katie Brown) which he
had met in the evening (when he was performing elsewhere), is leaving a
house party at which he was unwelcome, he is handcuffed, severely beaten,
and kicked by a dozen off-duty White policemen including Ryan Lemke, Ryan
Packard, Joseph Stromei, Jon Bartlett, 32, Daniel Masarik, 24, and Andrew
Spengler, 24 (the host), who falsely believed that he had stolen Spengler's
police badge and a wallet. Brown phones 911 and police officers Joseph Schabel
and Nicole Martinez are sent to the scene, but hit and arrest Jude and favor
the perpetrators. — details
— [Court
TV coverage] —(061024)

2003 Last commercial
flight of a supersonic airliner Concorde (one of the seven of British
Airways) leaves New York's John F. Kennedy International Airport at 07:38
(11:38 UT) and arrives at London's Heathrow Airport at 16:05 (15:05 UT).
The last commercial flight of an Air France Concorde was on 31
May 2003.

2002 After the close of NASDAQ on
23 October, helthcare software company VitalWorks (VWKS; formerly called
Infocure) announces, as expected, 3rd-quarter earnings of 8 cents per share
(2001 3rd quarter: 04 per share loss) an focecasts 2003 year's earnings
of 32 to 39 cents per share, while analysts expected 43 cents. So VWKS is
downgraded by Wells Fargo Securities from Buy to Hold. On the NASDAQ, 14
million of the 42 million VWKS shares are traded, dropping from their previous
close of $7.18 to an intraday low of 2.86 and close at 3.13. They had started
trading at $8.53 on 25 January 1999 and had peaked at $17.36 on 24 January
2000, then sunk to as low as $1.28 on 15 January 2001, before recovering
to as high as $10.00 as recently as 23 May 2002.

2002
Rifle X is found in a car parked at a rest stop in which are
sleeping John Allen Williams (changed to Muhammad after he converted to
Islam in 1985), 41, and Jamaican-born John Lee Malvo, 17, (whom Williams
pretends is his stepson), who are arrested at 03:19. The car has an opening
in its trunk that would permit someone to lie inside and fire the rifle
while remaining hidden. The gun is a .233 caliber Bushmaster. Thirteen shots
from that rifle killed 10 persons and gravely wounded three from 02 October
to 22 October, drew intense news media coverage, mobilized hundreds of law
enforcement officers, and disrupted the life of millions of persons living
in DC and neighboring Maryland and Virginia. Williams (or Muhammad)
served in the US Army from 1985 to 1994 (including in the Gulf War).

2002 Elections in Bahrain to the 40-seat lower house
of parliament. For 21 seats there was no absolute majority, so there will
be a runoff election on 31 October 2002. At least 10 of the 19 elected outright
are Islamic fundamentalists, belonging mainly to the mostly sunni groups
al-Asalah and al-Menber al-Islami. Sunnis, including the royal family, are
a minority of Bahrain's 400'000 citizens. Urged by the king, Sheik Hamad
bin Isa Al Khalifa (and by the fact that voters' IDs are stamped), 53% eligible
voters vote, despite a campaign for abstention by the shiite Al-Wefaq National
Islamic Society, headed by Sheik Ali Salman, and three other groups. The
elections, and the earlier municipal polls, are part of the democratization
process initiated by Sheik Hamad after he ascended the throne in 1999 following
his father's death. In 2001, Bahrainis overwhelmingly endorsed a national
charter that spelled out the reform program. In February 2002, Sheik Hamad
declared a constitutional monarchy and called today's legislative elections,
the first since 1973. In 1994 more than 40 persons were killed when Shiites
took to the streets to press for democracy and an end to their discrimination
in state jobs and services.

2000 El Parlamento
serbio forma un gobierno de coalición un mes después de la victoria de Vojislav
Kostunica frente a Slobodan Milosevic en las elecciones presidenciales.
2000 US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright ended
two days of historic talks with North Korea's Kim Jong-Il, with the Communist
leader indicating a willingness to restrain his country's long-range missile
program. 2000 In Kufar Kana, a Palestinian village
in Galilee, a group of armed Israeli police officers surround a house at
02:00. Four police officers, their submachine guns at the ready, burst into
the house, frightening the children, and take away Bakr Sa'id, 15. He is
interrogated that same night with shouts and threats  heard by another
detainee in the same police station. When this detainee tries to speak later
in court to Bakr Sa'id, a police officer slaps the boy in the face. Bakr
Sa'id would be released on 03 November. 1999 Fernando
de la Rúa, líder de la Alianza Opositora, logra la victoria en las elecciones
argentinas para suceder al peronista Carlos Saul Ménem. 1999
The International Brotherhood of Teamsters, starts a strike against Overnite
Transportation (a unit of Union Pacific). It would end it on
25 October 2002, without having achieved its main goal of a contract
for most of the company's 13'000 workers.1998 La
NASA estrena una nave espacial con motor eléctrico, el Deep Space 1 (DS1).
1998 En las elecciones autonómicas celebradas en
el País Vasco el PNV (Partido Nacionalista Vasco) logra la victoria y EH
(Euskal Herritarrok) consigue un significativo aumento de los sufragios.
1997 El escritor español Arturo Pérez Reverte recibe
el premio Jean Monet de Literatura Europea, por su novela La piel del
tambor. 1996 TWA announces that it had a $14.3
million loss during the previous quarter. Jeffrey H. Erickson, TWA's CEO
and President announces that he is planning to resign. Nevertheless TWA
stock closes at 8-1/2 up 3/8..1996 Ross Perot rejects
the request made the previous day by Bob Dole's campaign manager, Scott
Reed, as he met with Perot and asked him to drop out of the presidential
race and endorse Dole.1996 Wired Ventures, publishers
of Wired magazine and several popular Web sites, cancels plans for an IPO
for the second time in three months. The company had received only a lukewarm
response from Wall Street. In 1998, the company would sell the magazine
to publishing company Conde Nast. 1994 El científico
francés Daniel Cohen logra el Premio Literario de Derechos Humanos de la
UNESCO.

1991 Prodigy bans hate mail
Prodigy online service announces that
it will ban bulletin board messages that included bigoted or racist
content. Prodigy had been accused of allowing users to post anti-Semitic
messages. Originally, the service claimed it would allow such postings
because the service wanted to promote the "free expression of ideas.
However, after a public outcry, the company reversed its policy and
said it would not allow offensive statements to be posted.

^
1989 Televangelist sentenced to 45 years in prison for fraud The Reverend [but no longer
revered] Jim Bakker, a popular television evangelist, is sentenced
to forty-five years is prison and fined $500'000 for his conviction
on twenty-four counts of fraud and conspiracy. Bakker, the founder
of the Christian organization PTL, standing for "Praise The Lord"
or "People That Love" (some now say: "Pass The Loot") built
an evangelist empire that included Heritage USA., a $172 million theme
park in Fort Mill, South Carolina. In 1987, Bakker resigned his ministry
following admittance of an extramarital affair, and in 1988 he was
sued by the new PTL management for mismanagement and unjustified compensation,
leading to his trial for fraud and conspiracy. Bakker was found guilty
of defrauding 114'000 PTL followers by selling $1000 "partnerships"
that promise lifetime lodging rights at the Heritage USA. theme park.
Bakker oversold the lodging units and used the funds to pay PTL operating
expenses and support a lavish lifestyle. In 1991, an appeals court
finds the forty-five-year sentence excessive and reduces it to eighteen
years. In 1994, Bakker is paroled after serving just under five years
in prison.

^
1970 Allende becomes president of Chile, CIA will murder him.
Salvador Allende Gossens, an avowed
Marxist, becomes president of Chile after being confirmed by the Chilean
congress. For the next three years, the United States would exert
tremendous pressure to try to destabilize and unseat the Allende government.
Allende's election in 1970 was his third attempt at the presidency.
In 1958, and again in 1964, Allende had run on a socialist/communist
platform. In both elections, the United States government (as well
as US businesses such as International Telephone and Telegraph (ITT),
which had significant investments in Chile) worked to defeat Allende
by sending millions of dollars of assistance to his political opponents.
In 1970, the United States again worked for Allende's defeat, but
he finished first out of the four candidates. However, since he had
garnered less than 40 percent of the popular vote, the final decision
had to be made by the Chilean congress. The United States worked feverishly
to derail Allende's selection but the election is upheld on October
24, 1970. -- Après son élection
à la présidence de la république du Chili, Salvador Allende forme
un gouvernement d'union populaire qui réunit des représentants de
toute la gauche, des révolutionnaires aux socio-démocrates.--
Allende immediately confirms the worst
fears of US officials when he extends diplomatic recognition to North
Vietnam, North Korea, and Cuba, and also begins to take action to
nationalize the holdings of US corporations in Chile, notably ITT
and Kennecott Copper. US officials also believed that Allende was
supporting revolutionary activities in Latin America and viewed him
as a significant threat to hemispheric security and US economic interests
in Chile. Yet, Allende posed an interesting problem. Unlike Castro,
he had come to power peacefully and democratically. Thus, the United
States could hardly launch a Bay-of-Pigs-like attack on the Allende
regime. Undaunted, the administration of President Richard Nixon began
to formulate plans to destabilize the Chilean government and see to
the removal of Allende. These plans came to fruition in 1973 when
a coup by the Chilean military overthrew Allende and assassinated
him.

^1966 Vietnam: Manila Conference's
“Declaration of Peace”
In Manila, President Johnson meets with other Allied leaders and they
pledge to withdraw troops from Vietnam within six months if North
Vietnam "withdraws its forces to the North and ceases infiltration
of South Vietnam. A communiqué signed by the seven participants
(Australia, New Zealand, South Korea, South Vietnam, the Philippines,
Thailand, and the United States) included a four-point "Declaration
of Peace" that stressed the need for a "peaceful settlement of the
war in Vietnam and for future peace and progress" in the rest of Asia
and the Pacific. After the conference, Johnson flew to South Vietnam
for a surprise two-and-a-half-hour visit with US troops at Cam Ranh
Bay.

1962 Cuban Missile Crisis: US military on
high alert. Soviet
ships en route to Cuba capable of carrying military cargoes appear
to have slowed down, altered, or reversed their course as they approach
the US quarantine line, with the exception of one ship--the tanker
Bucharest. At the request of more than forty non-aligned
states, UN Secretary General U. Thant sends private appeals to Kennedy
and Khrushchev,
urging that their governments refrain from any action that may
aggravate the situation and bring with it the risk of war. At
the direction of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, US military forces go
to DEFCON 2, the highest military alert ever reached in the postwar
era, as military commanders prepare for the possibility of full-scale
war with the Soviet Union.

^1958 Chandler starts his last novel, never to finish
it. Raymond Chandler
starts working on his last novel, The Poodle Springs Story,
but he will die before completing it. Chandler was born in 1888 in
Chicago. He was raised in England, where he went to college and worked
as a freelance journalist for several newspapers. During World War
I, Chandler served in the Royal Flying Corps. After the war, he moved
to California, where he eventually became the director of several
independent oil companies. He lost his job during the Depression and
turned to writing to support himself at the age of 45.
He published his first stories in the early 1930s in the pulp magazine
Black Mask and published his first novel, The Big Sleep,
in 1939. He published only seven novels, among them Farewell My
Lovely (1946) and The Long Goodbye (1953), all featuring
tough, cynical detective Philip Marlowe. William Faulkner wrote the
screen version of The Big Sleep, which starred Humphrey Bogart
as Philip Marlow. Chandler also wrote Hollywood screenplays in the
1940s and early 50s, including Double Indemnity (1949) and
Strangers on a Train (1951). He died in March 1959.

^1954 Vietnam: US president
pledges support to South Vietnam
President Eisenhower pledges support to Diem's government and military
forces. Eisenhower wrote to South Vietnamese President Ngo Dinh Diem
and promised direct assistance to his government. Eisenhower made
it clear to Diem that US aid to his government during Vietnam's "hour
of trial" was contingent upon his assurances of the "standards of
performance [he] would be able to maintain in the event such aid were
supplied. Eisenhower called for land reform and a reduction
of government corruption. Diem agreed to the "needed reforms" stipulated
as a precondition for receiving aid, but he never actually followed
through on his promises. Ultimately his refusal to make any substantial
changes to meet the needs of the people led to extreme civil unrest
and eventually a coup by dissident South Vietnamese generals in which
Diem and his brother were murdered.

^
1931 Al Capone is convicted of tax evasion
Al Capone, Chicago's organized crime boss, is convicted of tax evasion
in a federal court. The government, long unable to convict Capone
for anything connected to his vast criminal enterprise, finally found
a charge that would stick. By failing to pay any taxes for 10 years,
Capone made it rather easy for the prosecution. After amassing a fortune
of $50 million, including his own island off the coast of Florida,
he was sentenced to 11 years in prison.
As a teenager in Brooklyn, Capone worked as a bouncer in a brothel.
When he made a disparaging remark about one of the girls, her brother
slashed Capone in the face with a knife. The three scars running down
the left side of his face earned him the nickname "Scarface," although
he later tried to ascribe the scars to fighting at war overseas. Capone
moved to Chicago, Illinois, where he became a henchman in his friend
Johnny Torrio's gang. As a cover, Capone had business cards made that
described him as a "Second Hand Furniture Dealer.
When alcohol became illegal with the ratification of the Eighteenth
Amendment in 1919, Torrio's gang got into the bootlegging business.
With the immense amounts of money they were taking in, organized crime
organizations were able to buy off virtually all of the judges and
law enforcement officials in the city. This influence with the law
proved helpful to Capone, although he didn't always need it. In 1924,
he killed fellow criminal Joe Howard in plain sight of many witnesses.
However, the case didn't make it very far because all of the witnesses
backed out of testifying. After he was shot several times by Bugs
Moran of Deanie O'Bannion's gang in 1924, Torrio took off for Italy,
leaving Capone in charge. Now the head of Chicago's biggest criminal
organization, Capone set up his headquarters at the Hawthorn Hotel
in Cicero, Illinois, where he reputedly killed several disloyal members
by crushing their skulls with a baseball bat.
In 1925, Moran and Hymie Weiss made a brazen midday attack on the
Hawthorn. Standing in the middle of the street, they fired hundreds
of rounds of machine-gunfire. But Capone survived and vowed revenge.
On February 14, 1929, Capone orchestrated the St. Valentine's Day
Massacre, killing seven top men in Moran's rival organization and
effectively leaving Capone in charge of the entire city until his
tax evasion conviction. Capone served time at Leavenworth and Alcatraz,
and he was released in 1939. By this time, syphilis had wrecked his
body, and he spent his remaining days at his Palm Island estate. He
died in 1947.

1916 Henry Ford gives equal pay to women.1912Battle
of Kirk Kilissa, ends soon after midnight as the Turks give up their
positions to the Bulgarians' bayonet attack. General von der Goltz
said Prussian soldiers would take this place in three days," a Bulgarian
officer remarked to a war correspondent. We've done it in three hours.
1911 Robert Scott's expedition leaves Cape Evans
for South Pole 1906
Nobel Medicine Prize to Camillo
Golgi and Santiago
Ramón y Cajal . in recognition of their work on the structure
of the nervous system1901 Widow Anna Edson
Taylor, 43, became the first person to survive going over Niagara Falls
in a barrel. (Mrs. Taylor's dreams of fame and fortune failed to materialize,
however, and she died in poverty in 1921.)

1901 First non-lethal barrel ride down Niagara
Falls Daredevil Annie
Edson Taylor initiates a famous stunt tradition when she goes over
Niagara Falls in a wooden barrel and lives. Taylor, who performs the
feat on her 43rd birthday, goes over the 53-meter-high Horseshoe Falls
on the Canadian side of Niagara inside a barrel 1.5 meter high and
1 meter in diameter. A leather harness and cushions line the barrel
to protect Taylor during her fall, and she emerges shaken but unhurt
in the river below. Taylor
hoped that after the stunt she could make a fortune touring the world,
displaying the famous barrel and relating the adventure. Although
the stunt did receive international attention, Taylor reaped few financial
rewards and died in poverty in 1921 after 20 years as a Niagara street
vendor.

1863 General Ulysses S. Grant arrives in Chattanooga, Tennessee
to find the Union Army there starving.1862 Union
Major General William S. Rosecrans replaces Major General Don Carlos Buell
as commander of the Army of the Ohio

^1862 Ineffective Union General Buell replaced by Rosecrans.
General Don Carlos Buell is replaced
because of his ineffective pursuit of the Confederates after the Battle
of Perryville, Kentucky, on October 8. He was replaced by William
Rosecrans, who had distinguished himself in western Virginia in 1861
and provided effective leadership at the battle of Corinth, Mississippi,
just prior to Perryville. Buell,
an Ohio native, served with distinction in the Mexican War. When the
Civil War began, he became a brigadier general in the Army of the
Potomac. In November 1861, General George McClellan recommended Buell
to replace William T. Sherman as commander of the Department of the
Ohio. Arriving too late to mount an overland offensive, Buell sent
troops up the Cumberland and Tennessee rivers in the winter, resulting
in the capture of Forts Henry and Donelson by General Ulysses S. Grant.
In 1862, Buell fought at Shiloh and Corinth in Tennessee and Mississippi
before returning to Kentucky to head a Confederate invasion in fall
1862. At Perryville, Buell's
army met Braxton Bragg's force as Bragg was driving northward. In
a bloody but indecisive engagement, the Yankees halted Bragg's advance.
Buell's force outnumbered Bragg's, so the Confederates began to retreat
back to Tennessee. Buell offered a weak and slow pursuit, so Bragg's
army slipped safely away. President Lincoln was distressed by Buell's
inaction. He was already frustrated with both Buell and McClellan,
who allowed General Robert E. Lee's army to escape to Virginia just
three weeks prior to Perryville. Lincoln also saw the Democrat Buell,
who was outspoken in his criticism of the Emancipation Proclamation,
as a political liability. Buell
was upset with his removal and demanded a trial to clear his reputation.
After five months of testimony, Buell was cleared of any wrongdoing
or army mismanagement. His military career was effectively over, however.
He settled in Kentucky after the war and died in 1898.

1861 The first transcontinental telegraph message is sent
(from Justice Stephen J. Field of California to President Lincoln).

1755 A British expedition against the French held Fort
Niagara in Canada ends in failure.

^1648 Peace of Westphalia winds down 30 Years War and
fragments Holy Roman Empire
The Thirty Years' War (1618-48) was a series of wars fought by various
European nations for various reasons, including religious, dynastic,
territorial, and commercial rivalries. Its destructive campaigns and
battles occurred over most of Europe, and, when it ended with the
Treaty of Westphalia in 1648, the map of Europe had been irrevocably
changed Overall, the intermittent
conflict was between the Holy Roman Empire, which was Roman Catholic
and Habsburg, and a network of Protestant towns and principalities
that relied on the chief anti-Catholic powers of Sweden and the United
Netherlands, which had at last thrown off the yoke of Spain after
a struggle lasting 80 years. A parallel struggle involved the rivalry
of France with the Habsburgs of the empire and with the Habsburgs
of Spain, who had been attempting to construct a cordon of anti-French
alliances. In 1648 treaties were
signed in Münster and Osnabrück (both in Westphalia) by agents of
the emperor, the German estates, Sweden, and France as well as between
Spain and the Netherlands. Fighting continued for some years--France
and Spain did not conclude peace until 1659--but the war was at last
winding down. The Peace of Westphalia brought territorial gains to
Sweden and France, awarded an electoral seat to Bavaria, and secured
for Protestant rulers the church properties they had confiscated,
based on the status quo of 1624. More important, it brought Calvinists
into the religious settlement and established the independence of
the Netherlands from Spain and of Switzerland from the empire. Most
significant of all, it guaranteed the nearly unlimited territorial
sovereignty of German princes, bringing to an end the last effort
(until the 19th century) to turn the empire into a centrally ruled
"modern" state. In this way 1648 sealed the fragmentation of the Holy
Roman Empire into hundreds of autonomous political entities, most
of them small. At the same time, it brought to an end the last major
conflict in continental Europe in which religion was a salient issue;
indeed, the war itself had demonstrated that reason of state was a
stronger determinant of policy than faith. In declaring the religious
situation fixed as of 1624, the treaty eliminated the jus reformandi
as a cause for confessional change; if a prince converted, his land
no longer converted with him. Religious pluralism and--albeit grudgingly--coexistence
were now the norm. The war's
social and economic cost is difficult to gauge, modern scholarship
having greatly modified original claims of vast human losses and near-total
economic ruin. Nonetheless, in the most embattled realms, such as
Württemberg, more than 50 percent of the people died or disappeared;
elsewhere, the loss was less severe. Most historians agree that an
overall population decline of 15 to 20 percent (from c. 20 million
to 16 or 17 million) occurred during the war and the ensuing epidemics.
In addition, historians agree that in theatres of war rural impoverishment
and displacement of people were widespread, while economic regression
happened nearly everywhere. For German society overall, the war was
a traumatic experience; it is rivaled in the national consciousness
only by the 1939-45 war as a time of unmitigated disaster.
To gain perspective on these calamities, their wider European aspects
must be considered. Wars, uprisings, and political turmoil had occurred
in many countries during the first half of the 17th century. The Fronde--a
series of civil wars in France between 1648 and 1653 whose goal, at
least in part, was to halt the growing power of royal government--and
the Civil War in England (1642 to 1651) are only the most famous of
these disturbances. Turmoil had occurred also in Catalonia, Portugal,
Naples, Ireland, Scotland, Sweden, and Russia. Historians have referred
to these events, including the numerous local manifestations of the
Thirty Years' War, as parts of a general crisis in the fabric of European
society, the causes of which range from a worsening of the climate
(Little Ice Age) to plagues, often spread by the armies roaming Europe
almost continuously at that time. But the most destabilizing factor
burdening society was the centralizing monarchy with its expanding
bureaucracy, extravagant courts, swollen armies, and incessant wars,
all of them supported by heavy taxation. No social group, or estate,
was unaffected by the effort of monarchs to alter in their favour
traditional ways of distributing power and influence. Resentment of
this and of its social cost was widespread; hence the proliferation
and the scale of rebellions.
-- Le Traité de Westphalie (ou de Münster) met fin à la guerre
de Trente Ans. La France de Louis XIV gagne en recevant la haute et
la basse Alsace, mais sans Strasbourg ni Mulhouse. Associée à la Suède,
la France devient protectrice des "libertés germaniques".

2008 Darnell Donerson “Hudson” 57,
and Jason Hudson, 29, her son, shot in their home at 7019 S. Yale
in the Englewood neighborhood of the South Side of Chicago, from which is
abducted and later this day killed Julian King [14 Aug
2001–], son of bus driver Julia Hudson, daughter of Darnell Donerson.
Police arrest as suspect the estranged husband of Julia Hudson, William
Balfour [05 May 1981~], who is on parole after nearly 7 years in prison
for attempted murder, vehicular hijacking, and possession of a stolen vehicle.
The news gets ample coverage because Darnell Donerson was the mother of
singer Jennifer
Kate Hudson [12 Sep 1981~] (who father, Samuel Simpson [–1999]
was a bus driver). —(081027) 2006 Jeffrey
Don Lundgren [03 Oct 1950–], by lethal injection in Ohio,
for the 17 April 1989 murder of of Dennis Avery, 49; his wife, Cheryl Avery,
46; and their daughters, Trina Avery, 15, Rebecca Avery, 13, and Karen Avery,
7. The Averys were the approximately 20 followers of cult leader Lundgren,
who in his 1990 trial said: “It's not a figment of my imagination
that I can in fact talk to God, that I can hear his voice. I am a prophet
of God. I am even more than a prophet.” and: “I cannot say that
God was wrong. I cannot say that I am sorry I did what God commanded me
to do in the physical act,.” because of the Avery's “lack of
faith.” — Crime
Library coverage —(061024)

2005 Rosa
Louise Parks, born on 04 February 1913, US Black seamstress,
famous for her 01 December 1955 refusal to give up a bus seat to a White
man, in Montgomery, Alabama, for which she was arrested, tried, and convicted
of disorderly conduct. This led to the the Montgomery
Bus Boycott. — (051024)

2004 Ricky Hendrick;
John Hendrick; Kimberly Hendrick; Jennifer Hendrick; Joe Jackson; Jeff Turner;
Randy Dorton; Scott Latham; Dick Tracy; and Liz Morrison; who are
all those aboard a Beech 200 plane coming from Concord, North Carolina,
which crashes at 12:30 in the Bull Mountain area 10km west of the Martinsville
airport. Tracy and Morrison were the pilots. The eight passengers were on
their way to the Martinsville Speedway to see a car race. Ricky was the
son and John the brother of Rick Hendrick, owner of the Hendrick Motorsports
NASCAR racing organization, to which the plane belonged. Kimberly and Jennifer
were John's twin daughters; Dorton was the team's chief engine builder;
Latham was a pilot for NASCAR driver Tony Stewart.

^
2004 cardinal James Aloysius Hickey, born on 11 October
1920, archbishop of Washington DC from 17 June 1980 until his retirement
on 21 November 2000. At his death, he was the second eldest of 14
US cardinals. Hickey was born in
Midland, Michigan, a small town of 7000 where the biggest employer
was the Dow Chemical Co. His only sibling was an older sister, Marie.
His father, James Peter Hickey, was a dentist who taught his son about
charity by example, treating patients who could not pay for their
dental care during the Depression. His mother, Agnes Ryan Hickey,
sent her son to St. Brigid's Catholic school.
From childhood, Hickey wanted to be a priest. In 1934 he entered St.
Joseph Minor Seminary in Grand Rapids, Michigan, and then attended
Sacred Heart Seminary in Detroit, from which he graduated in 1942
as valedictorian. He obtained a degree in sacred theology from Catholic
University in 1946 and, on 15 June 1946, was ordained a priest of
his home diocese of Saginaw, Michigan. His activities included ministering
to migrant sugar beet workers.
In 1950, he moved to Rome where he obtained degrees in canon law and
theology. In 1951, he was named secretary to Bishop Stephen Woznicki
[17 Aug 1894 – 10 Dec 1968] of Saginaw. In 1956, he was appointed
founding rector of St. Paul Seminary in Saginaw.
As an assistant to Bishop Woznicki, he attended the Second Vatican
Council in 1962. On 14 April 1967, he was consecrated bishop as auxiliary
of Saginaw. On 01 March 1969 until 1974, he was appointed back in
Rome rector of the North American College in Rome, where he remained
until appointed Bishop of Cleveland, Ohio, on 05 June 1974. On
17 June 1980, he was appointed archbishop of the Washington Archdiocese
(DC and five Maryland counties) by Pope John Paul II [18 May 1920~].
Hickey was made a cardinal on 28 June 1988. In
1996, Hickey underwent quadruple bypass surgery and four years later
he had hip joint replacement surgery. Although
Hickey submitted his resignation to the pope when he turned 75, and
every year thereafter, the pope only allowed him to retire in 2000.
Hickey was succeeded by Cardinal Theodore E. McCarrick [07 Jul 1930~].
Hickey became one of the
most influential behind-the-scenes leaders in the US Catholic Church.
Like Pope John Paul II, Hickey combined conservatism in church doctrine
with deep concern for social justice and compassion for the poor.
As early as the late 1980s, Hickey
set up policies to heighten awareness of child abuse and catch potential
molesters. In 1987, Hickey, who
as Archbishop of Washington was also chancellor of Catholic University,
suspended moral theology professor Charles Curran because of his open
dissent with the church's ban on contraception. Also in 1987, Hickey
had Georgetown University stop Dignity,
an organization of Catholic homosexuals, from holding Masses on the
university's campus. Beginning in
the early 1980s, Hickey objected to the ambiguous position on Church
teachings that homosexual activity is sinful held by mathematics professor
School Sister of Notre Dame Jeannine Gramick [1942~] and the Rev.
Robert Nugent, co-founders in 1977 of New
Ways Ministry. On 13 July 1999, the
Vatican ordered the two to halt their ministries to homosexuals
and, on 23 May 2000, ordered them to stop all public discussion of
the matter. In 1997 Hickey censured
Holy Trinity Church in Georgetown for its unapproved use of non-sexist
language in the liturgy, for letting women preach at vespers, for
allowing non-Catholics to receive communion and a Lutheran pastor
to preach during an ecumenical Mass.
In 1999, Hickey halted archdiocesan funding for a non-profit pregnancy
crisis center in College Park after it declined to stop dispensing
contraceptives. During the civil
war in El Salvador in the early 1980s, Hickey testified on Capitol
Hill in opposition to US military assistance to right-wing forces
in El Salvador. Hickey had been shocked by the 02 December 1980 rape
and murder of Maryknoll Sisters Maura Clarke [13 Jan 1931–]
and Ita Ford [23 April 1940–] along with Ursuline Sister Dorothy
Kazel [30 Jun 1939–], and lay missionary Jean Donovan [10 Apr
1953–] by five Salvadoran National Guardsmen en San Salvador.
When he was bishop of Cleveland he had allowed two of the women to
stay in El Salvador despite its worsening civil war. Shortly after
the murder, Hickey led a delegation of US bishops to the White House
to ask President Reagan [06 Feb 1911 – 05 Jun 2004] to maintain
his suspension of military aid to that country.
Acting on the pope's request for Catholics to oppose the death penalty,
Hickey in early 2000 called on Maryland Gov. Parris N. Glendening
to commute the death sentence of Eugene Colvin-El.
When the Rev. Michael R. Peterson, a 44-year-old priest and psychiatrist,
was dying of AIDS in 1987, Hickey visited him regularly. He encouraged
Peterson to let the nature of his illness be revealed after his death.
When Hickey officiated at Peterson's funeral Mass, concelebrating
it with 180 other priests, he announced the cause of Peterson's death.
It was the first time that any US senior Church leader had publicly
acknowledged a priest's death from AIDS. Hickey's
strictness even about details earned him the nickname "Picky
Hickey" in Cleveland. For example ordered one Maryland parish
to stop making communion wafers with honey and not just flour and
water. Hickey listened to Black
Catholics, put some of them on his staff and named three Black monsignors.
Hickey was disappointed by a few of
his protégés. George Augustus Stallings [1948~] was
a student in Rome when Hickey met him and supported his wish to be
a priest in the Washington Archdiocese. But in 1990, Hickey suspended
and then excommunicated Stallings after he established his own schismatic
“African-American Catholic Congregation”, combines Catholic
rites with African music and customs. Stallings once burned a portrait
of "the white Jesus" at a public rally because he insists that Jesus
was Black. Stallings called himself an archbishop and launched “Imani
temples” in seven cities, from Philadelphia to Los Angeles.
Imani Temple's national membership is claimed to be 7000. Stallings
entered politics by becoming a candidate for the Ward 6 DC City Council
seat in December 1996. On 27 May 2001 in a mass marriage ceremony
presided by Sun Myung Moon of the Unification Church, Stallings married
Japanese Sayomi Kamimoto [1977~]. It was the
same ceremony in which real Catholic archbishop Milingo [13 Jun
1930~] (who soon repented) married Korean Maria Sung [1958~].
Hickey had also taken interest in the
career of the Rev. Eugene Antonio Marino [29 May 1934 – 12 Nov
2000], who, on 12 September 1974, became an auxiliary bishop in Washington,
then, on 14 March 1988, archbishop of Atlanta. Marino resigned on
10 Jul 1990 after news reports about his relationship with a woman.
Under Hickey there was a great expansion
in the Washington archdiocese's network of social services to the
homeless, mentally retarded, refugees and elderly. The archdiocese
opened a hospice for AIDS patients and 14 homeless shelters; the first
was Mt. Carmel House in Northwest Washington. He transformed the archdiocesan
Catholic Charities from a traditional family support organization
to one serving the afflicted, especially the homeless and indigent.
The agency, which had a $2.7 million budget and a staff of 45 serving
10'000 persons in 1980, had by 2004 a budget of $23 million and a
staff of 350 assisting nearly 80'000 persons.
The Washington Archdiocese comprises the District of Colombia and
the five Maryland counties of Montgomery, Prince George's, Charles,
Calvert and St. Mary's. It has 550'000 Catholics, of which nearly
200'000 are of Hispanic descent and about 100'000 are Black. In number
of Catholics, it is the 30th of the dioceses
in the US. The first is Los Angeles (4 million) and the second
is New York (2.5 million, not counting 1.8 in Brooklyn which by itself
is 4th). Then come Chicago (2.4 million); Boston (2 million); Rockville
Centre (1.6 million); Philadelphia (1.5 million); Detroit (1.5 million)
Newark (1.3 million). For comparison,
here are the approximate numbers of Catholics, in millions, in some
dioceses in other countries: Mexico City 7 + 8.9 in its suburb Netzahualcóyotl;
Guadalajara 5.7; Monterrey (in Mexico)
4.5; Manila 8.7; Bogotá 6.5; Santiago de Chile 3.9; Kinshasa
3.9; Caracas 3.7; Lima 3.2; Barcelona 4.3; Madrid 3.2; Milan 4.9;
Rome 2.5; Buenos Aires 2.5; Cologne 2.2; Enugu (in Nigeria)
2.1; Lagos 2; Lisbon 1.9; Katowice (in Poland)
1.7; Montréal 1.6; Brussels 1.6; Vienna 1.4; Seoul 1.4; Budapest
1.3; Strasbourg 1.3; Paris 1.3; Lyon 1.2; Basel 1.1; Kampala 1.1;
Nairobi 1; Dublin 1. In Brazil:
São Paulo 6.8; Rio de Janeiro 4; Belo Horizonte 3.2; Recife 3.1; Porto
Alegre 3; Campo Limpo 2.6; São Miguel Paulista 2.6; Bahia 2.5
Hickey was the third archbishop of
Washington DC, which had been part of the Baltimore archdiocese prior
to 1947. His two predecessors were the Cardinal Patrick A. O'Boyle
[18 Jul 1896 – 10 Aug 1987] and Cardinal William W. Baum [21
Nov 1926~], who was appointed to the papal curia on 18 March 1980.
In 2004, the archdiocese has 140 parishes,
12 of them built under Hickey,in which Masses are said in 24 languages
other than English, ranging from Spanish to Tagalog to American Sign
Language. Hickey
gave strong support to the archdiocese's school system of more than
100 elementary and high schools serving 34'000 students, 44% of them
members of minorities and 25% non-Catholic. Catholic education was
a priority for Hickey, who refused to close down some financially
troubled Catholic schools in the District's inner city.
Hickey supported Spanish-language Masses, and the archdiocese's Spanish
Catholic Center expanded its legal, medical and employment assistance
to immigrants, serving more than 41'000 persons annually at its three
locations. Hickey improved the
archdiocese' administration, grouping its offices in the Pastoral
Center in Hyattsville. He developed grass-root networks of 4400 Catholics
to lobby local politicians on issues like abortion, the death penalty,
and welfare reform. Under Hickey, the archdiocese urged parishioners
to protest a DC City Council bill that would have required health
care insurers to pay for birth control prescriptions. In 1992, he
publicly opposed a DC bill to extend health care benefits to unmarried
partners of government employees, calling it an attack on the family.

2004 Ed Seitz, a US citizen, at 05:00 (02:00 UT) during
a mortar or rocket attack on “Camp Victory”, near the Baghdad
airport, the headquarters of the US army in Iraq. Seitz worked for the US
State Department's Bureau of Diplomatic Security.

2003
Palestinian, 11, after being shot by Israeli troops in the Gaza
Strip.

2003 Israelis Staff Sgt. Alon Avrahami,
man, 20, from Or Yehuda; Sgt. Adi Osman, woman, 19, from
Kfar Sava; and Sgt. Sarit Shneor, woman, 19, from Shoham;
and the Palestinian attacker who shot them, at 04:20 (01:20
UT) in the army base of the enclave settlement Netzarim, Gaza Strip. A second
attacker, who remained outside the fence, disappears in the fog. Two Israeli
soldiers are wounded.

2003 Elderly Palestinian man,
shot by Israeli troops, at whom he used to shout curses, shortly after midnight,
near the fence surrounding the enclave settlement Alei Sinai, Gaza Strip.
The Israelis shoot at “suspicious movements” which they vaguely
see through night-vision goggles.

2002 Hermán
Gaviria, 32, by lightning while practicing soccer with the Deportivo
Cali (Colombia) team, of which four others are injured.2002
A woman, aged 25, among the 600 hostages in Moscow's House of Culture,
her fingers broken, then shot in the chest by the Chechens who took over
at 21:05 (17:05 UT) on 23 October 2002.2001 Issa Jerius Khalil,55, Palestinian, in his car, by
heavy machinegun from an Israeli tank in Bethlehem. Three others are wounded.
The al-Aqsa intifada body count is now 757 Palestinians and 178 Israelis.
2001 Marwan Halabiye, 22, Palestinian, hours after
Israeli special forces shot him in the head in Abu Dis, a suburb of Jerusalem,
in the street close to his home.2001 Ayman Al Jalad, 20,
Mahmoud Al Jalad , 21, and Saleh Al Assi, 23, Palestinians killed
in Tulkarem by Israeli troops, who say that the three were about to fire
on them. Palestinians say that they were ambushed from a cemetery.2001 Ten Palestinians by Israeli troops raiding Beit Rima
which they say was the base for the 17 October 2001 assassination of cabinet
minister Rehavam Ze'evi. 1999 Chechens say 150 killed,
400 hurt in latest Russian assault (CNN)
1997 Nina Mackay, 25, police woman, after being stabbed
with a kitchen knife, in Stratford, east London, England, by paranoid schizophrenic
Somali illegal immigrant Magdi Elgizouli, 29, whom she and other police
officers were about to arrest for breach of bail. After pleading guilty
to manslaughter on 22 October 1998, Elgizouli would be committed to a mental
hospital. — (051119)1993 (Sunday) Tracy Latimer,
12, by exhaust fumes piped into a pickup truck from 11:30 to 12:00, by her
father, Robert Latimer, 36, to save her from a life of pain due to her severe
cerebral palsy. In Saskatchewan. Tracy Latimer was born on 23 November 1980.1992 Luis Rosales Camacho, poeta y académico español. 1991 Black man fatally shot by a White policeman, results
in rioting in St. Petersburg, Florida. 1982
Arturo Camacho Ramírez, poeta colombiano.1976:: 25
persons in fire at the Puerto Rican Social Club in the Bronx NY.1975 Ismail Erez Turkish ambassador killed by car bomb
in Paris 1966 Janovskaja,
mathematician 1961 Dr Milan Stoyadinovich, 73,
Yugoslav fascist PM (1935-1939) 1960 Disaster on
USSR launch pad, kills missile expert Nedelin and team (unconfirmed); USSR
claims he was killed in plane crash 1957 Christian Dior,
52, French designer, in Italy 1948 Franz Lehar,
compositor austriaco. 1947 $30 million of timber
in series of forest fires (New England States) 1945 Vidkun
Abraham Lauritz Jonsson Quisling, Norway's wartime minister president,
is executed by firing squad for collaboration with the Nazis  Vidkun
Quisling, títere nazi que gobernó Noruega durante la ocupación alemana,
muere ejecutado. 1944 The aircraft carrier USS Princeton
is sunk by a single Japanese plane during the Battle of Leyte Gulf.

^
1944 Louis Renault, 67, French automaker and accused
Nazi collaborator, in a Paris military prison hospital, of undetermined
causes. Born in Paris, Renault
built his first automobile, the Renault Type A, in 1898. Inspired
by the DeDion quadricycle, the Type A had a 270 cc engine (1.75 hp),
and could carry two people at about 30 mph. Later in the year, Renault
and his brothers formed the Societe Renault Freres, a racing club
that achieved its first major victory when an automobile with a Renault-built
engine won the Paris-Vienna race of 1902. After Louis's brother, Marcel,
died along with nine other drivers in the Paris-Madrid race of 1903,
Renault turned away from racing and concentrated on mass production
of vehicles. During World War
I, Renault served his nation with the "Taxis de la Marne," a troop-transport
vehicle, and in 1918, with the Renault tank. Between the wars, Renault
continued to manufacture and sell successful automobiles, models that
became famous for their sturdiness and longevity. With the German
occupation of France during World War II, the industrialist who had
served his country so well during the World War I mysteriously offered
his Renault tank factory and his services to the Nazis, perhaps believing
that the Allies' cause was hopeless. The liberation of France in 1944
saw the arrest of Louis Renault as a collaborator, and the Renault
company was nationalized with Pierre Lefaucheux as the new director.Renault
may suffered torture during his post-liberation detainment, he dies
soon after his arrest.

^
1795 Poland ceases to exist, partitioned again (and
not for the last time) At negotiations
for the third partition of Poland, the last Polish territory still
independent is divided between Prussia, Austria, and Russia, and the
country of Poland ceases to exist. In 1772, after an elective Polish
monarch failed to produce strong central authority, Prussia, Russia,
and Austria carried out the first partition of the country, followed
by a second partition by Prussia and Russia in 1793. In 1918, the
Poles finally regain their independence in the aftermath of World
War I, but it is snatched away again in 1939 when Nazi Germany and
Soviet Russia agree to divide the nation between them. Total Nazi
control of Poland follows the German invasion of Russia in 1941, and
with Soviet liberation in 1944, the country of Poland is reestablished
as a Communist republic within the Soviet bloc.

1708 Takakazu
Seki, mathematician 1684 Gerrit Battem,
Rotterdam draftsman, etcher, and painter, born in 1636. — more1667 Gabriel Metsu (or Metzu), Dutch artist born in January
1629.1655 Pierre
Gassendi, 63, French mathematician, philosopher
1635 Schickard,
mathematician 1601 Tycho Brahe, Danish mathematician and astronomer,
born on 14 December 1546. His work in developing astronomical instruments
and in measuring and fixing the positions of stars paved the way for future
discoveries. His observations were the most accurate possible before the
invention of the telescope; they included a comprehensive study of the solar
system and accurate positions of more than 777 fixed stars.
1537 Jane Seymour, born in 1509, 3rd wife of Henry VIII [28 June
1491 – 28 Jan 1547], the only one of his 6 wives who died before him
of natural causes before he got tired of her and divorced or beheaded her.
A few days earlier she had given birth to a baby who would become Henry
VIII's successor, Edward VI [12 Oct 1537 – 06 Jul 1553]. She had married
Henry VIII on 30 May 1536, days after his 2nd wife, Anne Boleyn [1507 –
19 May 1536], was beheaded.

2001 The Wayback
Machine is inaugurated. It is a free archive which preserves
and makes available more than 10 billion Internet pages, many of which have
disappeared from their original sites.

1994 Pathfinder: magazines online
Time Warner launches Pathfinder, an
ambitious Web site that put magazines such as Time, Sports Illustrated,
Entertainment Weekly, and others online. The site was one of the first
large-scale sites to be launched by a major publisher. At the time,
most consumers had not yet used the World Wide Web, and Netscape had
just introduced its browser a month earlier. Time Warner considered
charging a membership fee for Pathfinder, but, like many other sites,
it determined that users would be reluctant to pay for information
on the Web.

1948 "Cold War". Before the Senate War Investigating
Committee, industrialist and statesman Bernard Baruch, an influential advisor
to presidents Franklin D. Roosevelt and Harry S. Truman and British Prime
Minister Winston Churchill, asked about U.S-Soviet relations, creates the
term as he says: "Although the war is over, we are the midst of a cold
war which is getting warmer. 1948 Palabras,
volumen de poemas de Jacques Prévert se publica..

^
1945 The United Nations formally established with
the ratification of its charter by the first 29 nations.
^top^
Less than two months after the end of World War II, the United
Nations is formally established with the ratification of the United
Nations Charter by the five permanent members of the Security Council
and a majority of other signatories. In 1944, at the Dumbarton Oaks
conference in Washington DC, the groundwork was laid by delegates
from the United States, the United Kingdom, the Soviet Union, and
China for an international postwar organization to maintain peace
and security in the postwar world. The organization was to possess
considerably more authority over its members than the defunct League
of Nations, which had failed to prevent the outbreak of World War
II. In late April 1945, delegates
from fifty-one nations convened in San Francisco to draft the United
Nations Charter. On June 26, the document was signed by the delegates,
and on October 24, formally ratified. The first meeting of the United
Nations General Assembly, with fifty-one nations represented, occurred
on January 10, 1946, in London, England. On October 24, 1949, exactly
four years after the United Nations Charter went into effect, the
cornerstone was laid for the present UN Headquarters, located in New
York City. The United Nations
Charter, which was adopted and signed on June 26, 1945, is now effective
and ready to be enforced. The United Nations was born of perceived
necessity, as a means of better arbitrating international conflict
and negotiating peace than was provided for by the old League of Nations.
The growing Second World War became the real impetus for the United
States, Britain, and the Soviet Union to begin formulating the original
UN Declaration, signed by 26 nations in January 1942, as a formal
act of opposition to Germany, Italy, and Japan, the Axis Powers.
The principles of the UN Charter were
first formulated at the San Francisco Conference, which convened on
April 25, 1945. It was presided over by President Franklin Roosevelt,
British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, and Soviet Premier Joseph
Stalin, and attended by representatives of 50 nations, including 9
continental European states, 21 North, Central, and South American
republics, 7 Middle Eastern states, 5 British Commonwealth nations,
2 Soviet republics (in addition to the USSR itself), 2 East Asian
nations, and 3 African states. The conference laid out a structure
for a new international organization that was to "save succeeding
generations from the scourge of war, . . . to reaffirm faith in fundamental
human rights, . . . to establish conditions under which justice and
respect for the obligations arising from treaties and other sources
of international law can be maintained, and to promote social progress
and better standards of life in larger freedom.
Two other important objectives described in the Charter were respecting
the principles of equal rights and self-determination of all peoples
(originally directed at smaller nations now vulnerable to being swallowed
up by the Communist behemoths emerging from the war) and international
cooperation in solving economic, social, cultural, and humanitarian
problems around the world. Now
that the war was over, negotiating and maintaining the peace was the
practical responsibility of the new UN Security Council, made up of
the United States, Great Britain, France, the Soviet Union, and China.
Each would have veto power over the other. Winston Churchill called
for the United Nations to employ its charter in the service of creating
a new, united Europe-united in its opposition to communist expansion-East
and West. Given the composition of the Security Council, this would
prove easier said than done.
Charter of the United Nations -- Preamble
WE THE PEOPLES OF THE UNITED NATIONS DETERMINED
to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war, which twice
in our lifetime has brought untold sorrow to mankind, and
to reaffirm faith in fundamental human rights, in the dignity and
worth of the human person, in the equal rights of men and women and
of nations large and small, and
to establish conditions under which justice and respect for the obligations
arising from treaties and other sources of international law can be
maintained, and
to promote social progress and better standards of life in larger
freedom,
AND FOR THESE ENDS
to practice tolerance and live together in peace with one another
as good neighbors, and
to unite our strength to maintain international peace and security,
and
to ensure by the acceptance of principles and the institution of methods,
that armed force shall not be used, save in the common interest, and
to employ international machinery for the promotion of the economic
and social advancement of all peoples,
HAVE RESOLVED TO COMBINE OUR EFFORTS TO ACCOMPLISH THESE AIMS
Accordingly, our respective Governments, through representatives assembled
in the city of San Francisco, who have exhibited their full powers
found to be in good and due form, have agreed to the present Charter
of the United Nations and do hereby establish an international organization
to be known as the United Nations.

1939 Nylon stockings go on sale for 1st time (Wilmington,
Delaware) 1937 Miguel Ángel Coria, compositor español.1936 Rafael Hernández Colón, político puertorriqueño. 1932 Pierre-Gilles
de Gennes, France, who would receive the 1991 Nobel Physics
Prize for discovering that methods developed for studying order phenomena
in simple systems can be generalized to more complex forms of matter, in
particular to liquid crystals and polymer. 1925 Luciano Berio,
compositor y director de orquesta italiano. 1924 Chu Teh Chun,
Chinese painter active in France. — link
to an image. 1923 Denise Levertov poet/essayist
(Joy Beneath the Skin) 1911 Clarence M Kelley FBI
head 1906 Aleksandr
Osipovich Gelfond, Russian mathematician who died on 07 November
1968. His major contributions to the number theory of transcendental numbers
are in Transtendentnye i algebraicheskie chisla (1952); and to
the theory of interpolation and the approximation of functions of a complex
variable are in Ischislenie konechnykh raznostey (1952). 1904 Moss Hart Bronx NY, US playwright who, with George
S. Kaufman, wrote plays such as You Can't Take it with You and
The Man who came to Dinner.1898 Rafael García Valiño
y Marcén, militar español. 1887 Victoria Eugenia de Battenberg, reina de España.1874 Pierre Lelièvre, French Catholic priest who
died (main
coverage) on 23 July 1944. —(100101) 1873 Edmund
Whittaker, mathematician 1868 Charles Edwin
Conder, English painter, active in Australia and France, who died
on 09 February 1909.  MORE
ON CONDER AT ART 4 OCTOBER
with links to images.

^
1861 First US transcontinental telegraph line
Workers of the Western Union Telegraph
Company link the eastern and western telegraph networks of the nation
at Salt Lake City, Utah, completing a transcontinental line that for
the first time allows instantaneous communication between Washington
DC and San Francisco. Stephen J. Field [04 Nov 1816 – 09 Apr
1899, chief justice of California (US Supreme Court justice 10 Mar
1863 – 01 Dec 1897), sent the first transcontinental telegram
to President Abraham Lincoln [1809 – 1865], predicting that
the new communication link would help ensure the loyalty of the western
states to the Union during the Civil War. The push to create a transcontinental
telegraph line had begun only a little more than year before when
Congress authorized a subsidy of $40,000 a year to any company building
a telegraph line that would join the eastern and western networks.
This means the end for the Pony
Express (which had started on 3 April 1860), which was losing
money anyhow. The Western Union
Telegraph Company, as its name suggests, took up the challenge, and
the company immediately began work on the critical link that would
span the territory between the western edge of Missouri and Salt Lake
City. The obstacles to building the line over the sparsely populated
and isolated western plains and mountains were huge. Wire and glass
insulators had to be shipped by sea to San Francisco and carried eastward
by horse-drawn wagons over the Sierra Nevada. Supplying the thousands
of telegraph poles needed was an equally daunting challenge in the
largely treeless Plains country, and these too had to be shipped from
the western mountains. Indians
also proved a problem. In the summer of 1861, a party of Sioux warriors
cut part of the line that had been completed and took a long section
of wire for making bracelets. Later, however, some of the Sioux wearing
the telegraph-wire bracelets became sick, and a Sioux medicine man
convinced them that the great spirit of the "talking wire" had avenged
its desecration. Thereafter, the Sioux left the line alone, and the
Western Union was able to connect the East and West Coasts of the
nation much earlier than anyone had expected and a full eight years
before the transcontinental railroad would be completed.

Thoughts for the day:
No one is as happy or sad as he imagines. {it depends
on what the meaning of "is" is}
No one is as happy or sad at the event, as he was imagining in anticipation.
No one is as happy or sad as I imagine he could be.
Vanity, vanity, all is vanity/ That's any fun at all for humanity." 
Ogden Nash, US author and humorist [19 Aug 1902 – 19 May 1971].
Ogden Nash's humor is fun.
Fun, fun, fun, fun, fun, fun, fun, all is fun / That's any vanity for anyone..